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Transcripts

February 24, 2004

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
· KAET-ASU Poll - Read the complete Poll results
· Artist Barbara Rogers
In-Studio Guests:
· Bruce Merrill, KAET-ASU Poll Director;
· Tony Rogers, Arizona Healthcare Cost Containment System.

>> Michael Grant:
Tonight on "Horizon," should an investigation into the prison hostage standoff be led by a committee appointed by the governor or by the Maricopa County attorney? And should men and women of the same sex be allowed to marry? Just a couple questions we put to voters in the latest KAET/ASU poll. Also a state agency plans to market affordable healthcare coverage for small business. We'll take a look at that controversial plan. And we'll introduce you to an Arizona artist who turns natural landscapes into abstract paintings. Good evening, I'm Michael Grant. Welcome to "Horizon". President Bush called on Congress today to ban gay marriages. The issue of same sex marriages, one of the questions asked in the latest KAET/ASU poll. Statewide poll of 430 registered voters also asked about the governor's handling of the prison hostage crisis and if voters would raise taxes to increase correctional officer pay and to extend kindergarten to a full day. Here's a look at the results.

>>Mike Sauceda:
The poll found 73% approved of the way Governor Janet Napolitano handled the recent prison hostage situation. 14% disapproved. 13% didn't have an opinion. 66% of those surveyed approve of the governor's performance overall. 19% disapprove of the job she is doing. 15% had no opinion. The survey also revealed that 63% of those questioned feel the governor's committee investigating the prison hostage situation can do a fair job. 21% did not think the committee will be fair. 16% didn't have an opinion. When asked if they had more confidence in the governor's committee or a committee appointed by Republicans in the legislature to investigate the prison crisis, 33% favored the governor's committee, 31% favored the legislature's committee, 7% had confidence in neither and 11% had confidence in both. 18% were undecided. When asked if they would favor more money for correctional officers, even if it meant a tax increase, 60% supported that idea. 29% did not. 11% had no opinion. In another funding question, 55% of those asked would support an additional 25 million dollars for all day kindergarten in Arizona. 38% would not support. While 7% had no opinion. Finally, 62% of those surveyed said marriage should be only between a man and a woman. 28% were in favor of same-sex marriage. 10% did not have an opinion.

>> Michael Grant:
Statewide poll of 430 voters conducted February 19th through the 22nd by KAET-TV and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism Telecommunications at ASU. The poll has a sampling error of plus or minus 4.7% but we try not to talk about that. Here to discuss the results is the director of the KAET/ASU poll, Bruce Merrill. My expolitical science professor. You never talked about margin of error in class that can I recall.

>>Bruce Merrill:
That was just for the good students, Michael.

>> Michael Grant:
The results we're getting on same-sex marriage more than two to one opposed, that's pretty consistent with the same polling results nationwide?

>>Bruce Merrill:
Almost identical. Whenever we do polls statewide in Arizona they tend to be very close to the national polls. National polls are saying the same thing. About two to one against same-sex marriages.

>> Michael Grant:
On the subdata I found interesting the fact that independents were opposed, I want to say about 60%.

>>Bruce Merrill:
Yes, about 60% of them were, and remember a lot of the independents in Arizona live in the more rural areas, and I think that across the nation there is also a bit of kind of a suburban-urban kind of relationship with gay marriage. In the cities there's a little bit more support than there is in the rural areas and some of the suburban areas.

>> Michael Grant:
Interestingly enough, we did not ask the next question, how do you feel about a constitutional amendment, but normally that result narrows nationwide.

>>Bruce Merrill:
Yes, and I must say Mike Sauceda, one of our producers, wanted us very much to ask that question and I vetoed him so maybe I'm not so bright either. I wish we would have asked it. I can tell you what the polls show nationwide. They show that it's about 50-50. There's a lot of conservative people that are against gay marriage, but there's also a conservative people you should not easily change the constitution of the United States, and with it 50-50, frankly it's going to be very difficult, I think, to get a constitutional amendment, not impossible but it will be very difficult.

>> Michael Grant:
The governor's handling of the prison hostage crisis, obviously getting high marks, but then you've got sort of a dead-even split between whether or not her commission would do a better job or the legislature's commission.

>>Bruce Merrill:
Yeah. You and I were talking before the program, and I think it's an interesting result. The governor is doing well in Arizona. She's picked her issue quite well, fighting for Child Protective Services education, those are things that sell well with the public. And there's no question that she came out very well, about 75% of the people with an opinion felt that the governor did a good job handling the hostage situation. But it was very kind of results oriented. In other words, had it turned out badly, then the results probably would have been quite different, but they turned out well and she's got a lot of credit for it.

>> Michael Grant:
And given the strength of that response, and for that matter the satisfactory outcome of the hostage crisis, I guess I was slightly surprised that, as I say, it was pretty much a dead heat when we asked the question, well, do you think the governor's commission is better at investigating it or the legislature-Romley-MacDonald committee.

>>Bruce Merrill:
I think I would have expected a higher result in favor of her committee. The poll did find that people by a two to one margin felt her committee could conduct a fair investigation. It was very partisan, Michael. About 70%, 75% of the Republicans wanted the legislative Romley committee to handle it. A majority of the Democrats wanted the governor to handle it. It was a pretty partisan breakdown.

>> Michael Grant:
You and I have discussed this before, but oftentimes these kinds of questions will just simply break in a partisan way.

>>Bruce Merrill:
Yes, and I think clearly that's what this one did. In fact, if you look at the way it did break, one reason the governor is doing well, and I'm sure that it makes some of the Republicans a little uncomfortable looking two years from now, but the reason her ratings hold up well is she gets a majority of the Republicans in Arizona who think she's doing a good job, and I think that's what happens here.

>> Michael Grant:
Now, we asked a follow-up question on that on increased pay for correctional officers. I guess not surprisingly people said, sure, I'll support that.

>>Bruce Merrill:
Not surprisingly, but again, one of the limitations of these kinds of questions is, it doesn't give a lot of information. I mean, it's kind of almost an emotional support for the hostage system coming out well. Probably if there is a good side to something like that, it does call attention to a very important issue, and so that we're getting a little bit of a media bounce, but when yo really start putting dollars, particularfully a year where there's a lot of competition for those dollars, it might be a little bit different at the legislative level.

>> Michael Grant:
For example, I think that one of the questions we will ask periodically, asking people to rank their priorities in terms of are you willing -- you know, give me a feel for those things you are most willing to spend more money for. That probably would place a question like this in greater --

>>Bruce Merrill:
Absolutely. That's why the other thing that we did look at, of course, was support for full-day kindergarten. Arizona is only one of three states in the nation that doesn't support full-day kindergarten. And that turned out to be like 55-38 or something, a slight majority favored it. But in Arizona where you have a lot of older retired people, it's kind of hard sometimes to sell what some people see not absolutely essential as it relates to education.

>> Michael Grant:
That's actually a fairly narrow result. I'm mildly surprised by that. Particularly since the question -- only the legislature has been asked to approve $25 million to fund full-day kindergarten in Arizona. Do you approve or disapprove of funding full-day kindergarten. The 25 million is only the first-year phase-in amount.

>>Bruce Merrill:
In fact, it's, what did we say, 180 million to fully operationalize full-day kindergarten in ashes? I think it's fair if we had said that and pointed out to people we're not really talking about 25 million but over the next several years 180 million, there might have been less support than that.

>> Michael Grant:
You were telling me before we went on the air that the same-sex marriage question had attracted a lot of calls and those kinds of things?

>>Bruce Merrill:
There's a lot of interest in it, largely because it's a political year, and again I don't question the president's motivation at all. He -- he has a record as a social conservative and as a religious conservative, but it's also the kickoff of his campaign and the first thing you do when you run a new campaign is you go back to the base and reenergize them. And I think the timing of this -- everything is political, because it's a political year. There's no question that this is getting a lot of play in not only the national media but the local media because of its tie with the national campaign.

>> Michael Grant:
Of course, he's being helped somewhat in his timing by the Mike Sauceda Supreme Court and the San Francisco Mayor but --

>>Bruce Merrill:
Yeah, as we were saying, have you seen Kerry or Edwards on TV much the last couple of days? No.

>> Michael Grant:
Bruce Merrill, thank you very much.

>>Bruce Merrill:
And, Mike, again, thanks for to our volunteers. They do such a wonderful, wonderful job.

>> Michael Grant:
They absolutely do. Our thanks to them.

>> Michael Grant:
State agency that provides medical coverage for the uninsured is also authorized to offer affordable health insurance to small business. Now the agency's director wants to more aggressively market small business coverage. States began providing small business health coverage after Congress passed the health insurance flexibility and accountability act in the 1980s. Arizona's small business coverage is administered by the Arizona healthcare cost containment system or AHCCCS. Aimed at businesses with less than 50 employees, the plan had covered as many as 20,000 employees in 1997. It currently serves about 11,000. That may soon change. The state agency has hired HMI marketing and advertising of Tempe to promote it's small business healthplan. The advertising firm will use direct mail to reach employers and work with chambers of commerce, hospitals and health providers to spread the word. Joining me now is Tony Rogers, director of the Arizona healthcare cost containment system. Tony, it's good to see you.

>>Tony Rodgers:
Good evening.

>> Michael Grant:
Healthcare group has been around since AHCCCS inception. But it's never really, I don't think, lifted off the ground. Maybe the way it was thought to be lifting off the ground when AHCCCS was first conceived. Why the push now?

>>Tony Rodgers:
Well, I believe that we have a real problem with the uninsured in this state. We have over a million people who don't have healthcare insurance. This creates a problem for the state in term of the potential for many of these individuals needing to get healthcare and then becoming eligible on our Medicaid program. Healthcare group has been around a long time and we really haven't used it to reduce the number of uninsured. That's what it was designed to do, and when I came here in August, I talked to the governor, I said, I thought this was a really good opportunity to use healthcare group to solve some of the problems, especially for small business to get affordable health healthcare insurance.

>> Michael Grant:
It's tried to expand in the past and has not been successful. Why not and why do you think it will be more successful this time?

>>Tony Rodgers: I think there's a number of reasons. I think AHCCCS directors and administration in the past have focused on the Medicaid portion of the AHCCCS responsibility. As you know, with the passage of proposition 204 there was a major increase in AHCCCS membership, and so I think the focus was there. I think -- also think the fact that AHCCCS doesn't have the capability to market healthcare group effectively. I think there was a lack of awareness because we didn't market it. And I think you saw that in the fact that we grew to 20,000 a and then we started to go back down because no one was really aware of it.

>> Michael Grant:
Why do you think this marketing effort will produce different results than some others have?

>>Tony Rodgers:
I think if we do let people -- inform people about healthcare group through grass roots marketing, talking to small business employers about what we can offer them in affordable healthcare insurance, I think that's one step in the right direction. I also think we have to innovate our healthcare products. Most of the individuals who work in small business can't really afford a comprehensive $200 a month premium. But if we can innovate our product so that we can offer them a lower cost product, it may not have all of the benefits that you can get in a comprehensive benefit plan, but if I can offer a small business employer, employees a cafeteria plan so that one person can choose a comprehensive benefit, another person can choose a value benefit or a less comprehensive benefit, and price it so that they can afford it, I think that's the business strategy that will work.

>> Michael Grant:
Here's what I'm interested in. I'm 23 years old. I'm not making very much money at my job. It's a starter job. All I'm really interested in is if I get really sick I want to have some healthcare coverage. Is that the kind of thing you're talking about? You can package that for $80 a month instead of $200.

>>Tony Rodgers:
You hit the nail on the head. I think healthcare group has had a comprehensive benefit -- the individuals who could afford that knew that they were going to need care. The demographics of healthcare group right now is that the average age is 46 years of age. We don't have the young employees buying into healthcare group. So you're absolutely right if that I can offer the young employee what they need, I need to see a physician, I need to know if I go to the emergency room my emergency is covered and my in patient care is covered but I don't need all the other bells and whistles.

>> Michael Grant:
Let's get to the controversial aspect of this, at least in some quarters. In some legislative quarters are saying, hold it, we don't want a state-run healthcare plan in this. We want the market to take care of it. Why isn't the market taking care of this kind of innovation and delivering this kind of product?

>>Tony Rodgers:
Well, there have been attempts in the past for commercial healthplans individually to try to penetrate this market with some creative products, but I don't think they've really had a concerted effort, and you have to understand that healthcare group actually contracts with other healthplans to provide these services. We're able because we're AHCCCS to allow those healthplans to offer creative benefit packages that will be better priced for the small business market, and so I think this is an excellent opportunity for the commercial market to come in and work with healthcare group and innovate new products.

>> Michael Grant:
But some HMOs are saying, no, hold it, we don't want to do it that way, you're taking away our market share by offering these product and really that's not a role a state agency should be occupying.

>>Tony Rodgers:
Well, I would agree, we don't want to substitute individual who are covered by commercial insurance and put them into a state-run program. Healthcare group is a state-sponsored program. We're not really running it. The healthplans run it. What we're offering is an opportunity for them to be covered by a state agency that can oversee what they're doing but not to the same regulation that they have under Title XX, which requires that they offer certain benefits and requires approval. We can give them a place to innovate, a laboratory, if you will, and so I've offered to that a number of commercial healthplans, and actually a number of them are interested, and looking at this opportunity. In fact f you look nationally, Arizona is ahead of the game, and Arizona with healthcare group can do something that other states are just beginning to look at, offering creative products for small business.

>> Michael Grant:
Is that fair? Why not go into Title XX and change Title XX, these are the statutes that we're talking about here, and allow HMOs, whatever, insurance providers, to be more creative, to not have this one-size-fits-all kind of requirement?

>>Tony Rodgers:
That may be the end results 6 all our efforts. I think first we prove it we, prove it in the laboratory under AHCCCS that these kinds of benefits work, that they're affordable, that there are no unintended consequences by offering these streamline benefits to small business, and then let's go change Title XX. Let's allow any willing commercial healthplan to offer these benefits.

>> Michael Grant:
Any benefits to this for the larger AHCCCS population? It was thought, at least initially, that you could take a -- a younger healthier group and by fitting those people into the mix you would have more -- a more efficient body to cover generally. Does this plan and program have any of those sorts of ramifications for the larger AHCCCS population?

>>Tony Rodgers:
Well, I think it gives the larger AHCCCS population an opportunity, if they go to work in small business for that small business owner to offer them affordable healthcare premiums, and if we can get them on a premium-based program, then they won't need to be on AHCCCS/medicaid, even if they qualify by income. In fact, there was a study done by St. Luke's health initiative that showed 38% of the uninsured in Arizona are in small business, and of that 38%, two-thirds would qualify for AHCCCS by income right now.

>> Michael Grant:
What's next?

>>Tony Rodgers:
Well, we're working on legislation. We're working with the commercial healthplans to agree with us to use this tool that -- that the state has to innovate new products. We hope to grow to 100,000 lives within the next three years. I think if we do that, we've proven that this works, and I think it will be easier to get changes in Title XX.

>> Michael Grant:
All right. Tony Rogers, director of AHCCCS thank you very much for being here. We appreciate the information.

>>Tony Rodgers:
Thank you very much.

>> Michael Grant:
A Scottsdale gallery features an exhibit from Tucson artist Barbara Rogers as Sooyeon Lee shows us. Rogers brings nature to life in the form of abstract landscapes.

>>Barbara Rogers:
It's an opportunity to keep giving birth. Some of them are little. Some of them are gigantic. Some of them aren't terribly attractive but I love them anyway. It's an opportunity to grow mentally. Unbelievably good things have come to me as a result of my painting.

>> Sooyeon Lee:
Creation... destruction... and rebirth. Barbara Rogers examines all in that her paintings.

>>Barbara Rogers:
It was in my family. People drew. My dad drew things because maybe it was a faster way for him to describe what he was talking about. So I saw people drawing, and I knew it was powerful. A powerful means of communication. And I had my dad's cousin, and she was an artist, she painted, so it never occurred to me that women didn't paint and didn't go off and study, because she went off and studied art in the '30s.

>> Sooyeon Lee:
And Rogers did just that. She went to California and got her art degree. Rogers says the garden is a metaphor for life cycles, chaos and order.

>>Barbara Rogers:
The life of something as beautiful as a flower or a certain kind of plant is so brief that you become able to deal with your grief, and you understand that the end creates a beginning for another form.

>> Sooyeon Lee:
In the early '80s, one big storm in Hawaii changed everything for Rogers.

>>Barbara Rogers:
What I saw was the death of a garden that took 30, 40 years to create and was ruined, and then what was the person to do? They cleared away all this debris. So the piles of this debris were, in themselves, actually beautiful, once I got past the grief. In the weirdest way, it opened up this wonderful door into pure form, not picture postcard beauty of a garden, but very abstract, primary forms in nature, which was what was left after the storm.

>> Sooyeon Lee:
Teaching is another passion.

>>Barbara Rogers:
I think I teach because I like to be connected to what's going to happen in the future, because I have a lot of opinions that I like to share, because I have ideas of, you know, what makes a wonderful painting. And if they're willing to listen, then I'm willing to discuss that, and every person is such a surprise package. I love being able to turn them on to something that will be a love for the rest of their lives, that they don't need other people to do it, they'll just be happy being alone, being able to paint. I want to introduce you to this path, and the reason it's here, and that is to celebrate the walk taken by women with beautiful shoes so they don't have to walk in sinneders. -- sinneders. -- cinders. I want people to understand the fragility of nature and their environment. Hopefully in each one of my pieces there's a reminder that they are in a powerful position to do something to preserve all the gifts we've been given. We get to be alive on this earth, and I think it's up to each one of us to do a little something every day or in some cases a big something that allows beautiful plants, animals, insects to keep being born.

>> Sooyeon Lee:
Barbara Rogers' abstract landscape paintings speak clearly of the harmony of nature.

>> Michael Grant:
The work of Barbara Rogers on display at the Kiaruskaru (SP?) Gallery in Scottsdale. You will find a link to the gallery on "Horizon"'s web page. Go to www.kaet.asu.edu and click on "Horizon." You'll also find results from tonight's KAET/ASU poll and transcripts of past shows.

>>Merry Lucero:
The risk of unnatural wildfire to Arizona's forests is at a catastrophic point. The governor's forest health oversight council examined ways in which Arizona's forest region communities should defend themselves from the ravages of fire. We'll look at some of their key ideas, including some of the more controversial recommendations. That's Wednesday on "Horizon."

>> Michael Grant:
Thursday we'll be taking a look at the leadership consortium. That's a not nonprofit organization aimed at developing more leaders of color, then on Friday news reporters bring insight, perhaps, and analysis of the week's top stories to the Journalists Roundtable. Thanks for being here on a Tuesday evening. I'm Michael Grant. Have a great one. Good night.

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